Massive Change: Adobe Unifies Flash Player Across Platforms

Adobe has big plans for its Flash Player 10.1. The browser-based edition of its Player runtime should support multiple operating systems.

Among the systems supported in the near term by Flash Player are Windows Mobile, Palm WebOS, Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Later this year beta versions for Android, Symbian and Blackberry should become available. Around 50 partners are participating in the Open Screen Project led by Adobe, working on the unification project. According to Adobe's announcement, the target of their work is currently the browser-based runtime. Among the group are almost all the leading mobile phone manufacturers.

The Flash Player 10.1 features include HD video and leveraging of the accelerated GPU. Mobile devices with the named operating systems that Adobe more or less comprehensively services should include functions such as multitouch and use of the optionally integrated acceleration sensor.

Further details are on the Adobe Labs webpage, which is spiced with a number of video demonstrations.

Related content

Under the auspices of the Open Screen Project, mobile vendor Nokia and software maker Adobe are providing a $10 million fund to help developers create mobile Flash applications. The underlying software will become free at least to some extent, according to Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch.

Adobe announced a critical vulnerability for its Flash Player 9.0.159.0 and 10.0.22.87 and earlier, along with the authplay.dll component in its Reader and Acrobat 9.x., that goes across platforms in Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Solaris.